The growing phenomenon of social media has resulted in a new generation of “influencers.” Every day, tens of millions of consumers go online to express opinions, share ideas and publish media for the masses. Consumers control the conversation and play a significant role in shaping, for example, the purchasing decisions of others. Thus, companies have to work harder to manage their reputations and engage consumers in this fluid medium. Business that learn to understand and mine consumer-generated content across blogs, social networks, and forums have the opportunity to leverage the insights from others, make strategic business decisions and drive their bottom line. Social media monitoring is often the first step to adopting and integrating the social Web into business.
The problem with monitoring social media for business (and other) interests is that it difficult to “separate the wheat from the chaff.” Conventional tools and methods for monitoring often fail to turn social media data into actionable intelligence. Too often, such methods produce only statistical views of social media data, or produce far more data than a company can react to while missing critical pieces of data. Therefore, what is needed are methods and systems for identifying valuable information, and only valuable information, (e.g., as defined with respect to a particular interest, such as a business interest) in real-time.